Director Lars von Trier shows the Earth’s destruction at the outset of Melancholia – perhaps to spare viewers two hours of increasing anxiety or maybe just to demonstrate even to potential walk-outs that he is unafraid do away with the whole planet in a cosmic collision.
Melancholia begins with an eight-minute visual overture consisting of gorgeous, slow-motion tableaux set to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, which underscores and enriches the entire film.
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Melancholia Directed by Lars von Trier. |
The first half, titled “Justine,” follows a newlywed bride (Kirsten Dunst) and her groom, Michael (Alexander Skarsgård), from their excessively late arrival at the golf-course-equipped country estate of Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and her husband, John (Kiefer Sutherland).
In the proud tradition of The Celebration (directed by von Trier’s artistic “Dogme-brother” Thomas Vinterberg) and Rachel’s Getting Married, everything seems to go wrong, even though it all looks as perfect and opulent as a Tom Ford magazine ad.
Parents fight, children squabble, guests leave, and – whether or not it has anything to do with the new object in the sky, dubbed Melancholia – the bride is strangely listless and morose.
Dunst turns in one of her best performances since Interview with the Vampire as the disconsolate bride drowning in malaise at her own nuptials. Skarsgård is similarly pitch-perfect as the groom, who is flustered by his bride’s behaviour yet tends to cautiously follow her lead both in private and in public, even though she is nothing like her tyrannically cantankerous mother (Charlotte Rampling).
Justine’s father (John Hurt), an easygoing soul who jokes and flirts as long as his ex-wife goes unmentioned, feuds openly with her when they cross paths, leading her to proclaim to the entire wedding party that she hates marriage.
Sutherland does well playing against type as the vexed host who can’t stop talking about money (particularly his own), though when he barks lines such as “that depends on whether or not we have a deal,” it is difficult not to think of Jack Bauer with a gun.
And Udo Kier has a hilarious cameo role as the hapless wedding planner frustrated and embittered by the bride and groom’s general lack of co-operation with his schedule.
Part two, “Claire,” takes place later on, still at Claire’s house, where Justine has come to stay as a near-invalid – allowing von Trier alumna Gainsbourg to look on as his next leading lady is pathologized (though the men don’t fare so well this time around either).
Claire and John’s son Leo (Cameron Spurr) seems uniquely able to penetrate Justine’s stupor, which has grown so severe that to expend any effort at all is beyond her and Claire has to bathe her like an infant.
But then it’s Gainsbourg’s turn again – sort of – as Claire is overwhelmed by fear of the oncoming planetoid despite news broadcasts reassuring that scientists predict nothing more than a harmless “fly-by.”
They are, of course, dead wrong – though von Trier has admitted subordinating astrophysics wholly to drama, so that is not a knock on the astronomical community.
And it makes sense, considering von Trier’s point of entry to Melancholia was a bout of depression and therapy during which he learned that depressive people, accustomed to doom and gloom, tend to behave more calmly in moments of crisis.
Bookended by moments of uncompromising awe and replete with beautiful cinematography, Melancholia makes the terrestrial apocalypse as poignant and as splendid to look at as one hopes and expects such a moment might be. It isn’t uplifting or amusing any more than Revolutionary Road or Blue Valentine, but it is a case study in excellent independent filmmaking.